Strange Fruit Hung from Northern Trees

Jubilant Whites celebrate the beating, torture, and lynching of three Black circus roustabouts in Duluth, Minnesota in 1920.  This image was printed on postcards and sold briskly for years after the lynching, as described by Minnesotan Bob Dylan in the openings verse of Desolation Row.

Ida B. Wells and the Black press including W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Crisis and the Chicago Daily Defender had long exposed lynching as a brutal tool of oppression in the Jim Crow South.  Later Billie Holiday would write and sing about the Strange Fruit she witnessed dangling from lamp posts and bridges on her tours of the South.  Lynchings were a terrible thing, civilized people agreed, but they were a Southern thing.

That’s why much of the nation was shocked to learn that on June 15, 1920 that three Black circus workers were dragged from a Duluth, Minnesota jail, beaten, and hung by a howling mob of as many as 1,500 citizens. 

The busy Lake Superior port and principle city of the Iron Range, with a tiny Black population of its own, seemed like the last place in the country to expect such an outrage.  It was a city of hard working immigrants, most of them Finnish, Norwegian, Swede, and German.  Many of them, especially the Finns, were Socialists, Wobblies, and now Communists with roots in the labor and union movements.  It was not that violence itself was unexpected there, it was just that it was not associated with the epic labor battles that had long raged across the Iron range.

During the World War “decent citizens” had been worked up into a frenzy of patriotism and had come to view the immigrant radicals, most of them opposed to the war, as threats.  The refusal of workers to abide by patriotic calls for labor peace and keep up the flow of vital taconite ore to the freighters and down to the steel mills of Gary and Chicago stoked more outrage.

In September of 1919 a young Finish immigrant, Olli Kinkkonen, thought by a mob to be a Draft dodger, was beaten, tarred, and feathered, and lynched in a downtown park.  No one was ever charged or tried for that murder.  So violence and lynching were not unknown in Duluth.

1919 had also been a year when race riots erupted in Chicago and in other Midwestern cities where waves of Blacks from the South had poured into the cities to take war time jobs.  Although Duluth, with only a handful of Blacks residents, had escaped the rioting, they had not escaped the national hysteria that followed.

So the stage was set for the unexpected.

Lured by advertising like this for the John Robinson Circus, two young people were drawn to the grounds to watch the set up--and maybe for a romantic rendezvous. 

The circus was in town.  On June 14 the John Robinson Circus, a mid-sized traveling show, rolled into town.  As always, the arrival of the circus stirred local excitement.  Two young people, Irene Tusken, 19, and James Sullivan, 18 were among the many who came down to the grounds where the show was being set up to watch the excitement.  The Circus encouraged that—it was good for ticket sales.  By design or otherwise Tusken and Sullivan, who had arrived separately, got together on the grounds.  They drifted around to the relative isolation of an area behind the big top.  A gang of Black roustabouts was unloading the menagerie tent nearby.

What happened next is a matter of confusion and controversy.  There may—or may not—have been some kind of confrontation between Sullivan and some of the roustabouts.  Later that evening police received a call from Sullivan’s father claiming that his son had been attacked and robbed.  The boy was questioned and told police that five or six of the workers attacked and robbed him and then raped Tusken as he was held at gun point.  Tusken seemed frightened and confused, but generally went along with Sullivan’s story.

All 150 Black workers from the circus were rounded up and lined up against the railroad tracks.  Sullivan was brought there to identify the alleged assailants.  He identified six and said a few others might have been involved.  The six were taken to jail.

Overnight rumors flew around town, including reports that Tusken had been murdered.  In fact the story of the rape fell apart almost immediately.  A doctor examining her the next morning found no physical evidence of assault—bruising, scratches, abrasions—or of semen.

The respectable press of Duluth reported the mob action but also fanned the flames by publishing exagerated claims and rumors. 

Local newspaper reports sensationalized the charges, rumors ran rampant.  Through the day of the 15th a crowd grew around the jail until it became a mob of more than 1,000.  An attack on the jail was expected.  Authorities ordered deputies, guards, and police on the scene not to resist an attack with firearms.

When the mob moved on the jail, police fought back as best they could with fire hoses and truncheons.  But they were vastly outnumbered and after a vicious melee in which men on both sides were injured they were overwhelmed.  In fact the resistance had only inflamed the mob who managed to seize three men—Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson, and Isaac McGhie.  They were beaten inside the jail and then hauled to the street where they were put on sham trial.

They were taken to the center of town, the corner of 1st Street and 2nd Avenue East where they were beaten again and hung from a lamp pole.  The mob posed for pictures with the bodies which were published in the press and later sold souvenir post cards.

The three other men suspected in the rape were still in the jail.  A shifting mob kept up a presence outside, threatening a new attack.  But it was not until the next morning that National Guard troops arrived to secure the jail and its prisoners who were moved to the St. Louis County Jail under heavy guard.

The Duluth Ripsaw, scandal sheet which often was at odds with local authorities broke the news that the alleged rape victim was never raped at all bring the whole case into doubt.

As the rape case against the victims evaporated over the next few days, the mob action drew national headlines.  Most were condemning.  Some Southern papers, however, openly gloated that Yankees were now awakening to the threat to white womanhood and were taking vigorous “corrective action.”

But next door in Superior, Wisconsin the local police chief pledged that, “We are going to run all idle Negroes out of Superior and they’re going to stay out.”  How many were actually rousted and deported is not certain, but all of the blacks employed by a carnival visiting the city were fired and told to leave the city.

A Grand Jury was empanelled on June 17, but despite loads of evidence including photographs and the open boasts of ringleaders, the jury had a hard time brining indictments.  After a struggle, 37 were indicted for participating in the lynching, 25 for rioting, and 12 for first degree murder.  Several were indicted on multiple charges.  In the end only three were convicted of rioting.

Of the Blacks suspected in the alleged rape and assault, the three survivors from the jail and four others were indicted for rape, but the charges against all but two were dropped.   William Miller was acquitted and Max Mason was convicted and sentenced to serve seven to thirty years in prison.  Amid growing public outrage, Mason was released from prison after only four years on the proviso that he leave Minnesota and never return.  Somehow I suspect he was never tempted to violate that provision.

Like many places after such a shameful atrocity, Duluth tried hard to forget it ever happened.  Willful amnesia it’s called.  But nagging reminders kept popping up.

Young Minnesotan Bob Dylan wrote of the lynchings in his classic 1965 song Desolation Row.

In 1965 Duluth born Bob Dylan, whose father was five years old and living two blocks from the lynching in 1920 opened his song Desolation Row with a reference to that awful night:

They’re selling postcards of the hanging

They’re painting the passports brown

The beauty parlor is filled with sailors

The circus is in town  

In 2003, after a long public campaign, a stunning monument to the three lynching victims was unveiled—a plaza including three seven-foot-tall bronze statues across the street from the site of the lynchings. The Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial was designed and sculpted by Carla J. Stetson, in collaboration with Anthony Peyton-Porter, a California based Black writer who had taken an interest in the case.

Bas relief images of the three lynching victims over look a downtown Duluth plaza near the scene of their murders.

At the dedication Warren Read, the great-grandson of one of the most prominent leaders of the lynch mob told the crowd:

It was a long held family secret, and its deeply buried shame was brought to the surface and unraveled. We will never know the destinies and legacies these men would have chosen for themselves if they had been allowed to make that choice. But I know this: their existence, however brief and cruelly interrupted, is forever woven into the fabric of my own life. My son will continue to be raised in an environment of tolerance, understanding and humility, now with even more pertinence than before.

Read has since written The Lyncher in Me, a memoir of his family and of his own search for reconciliation with the decedents of Elmer Jackson.

Becoming an All-Expense Paid Guest of Uncle Sam— Coming Home and After

I winged from Duluth to O'Hair in a plane just like this.

Note—The tenth and last installment of my memoir series about by experiences with the Draft, Justice System, and prison during the waning days of the Vietnam War Era.

I strode across the broad lawn of Sandstone  on a brilliant morning, the cheap plastic shoes given to me by the Feds already in their first few moments extracting additional punishment that should have been outlawed by some kind of international anti-torture law.  I waited briefly in the warming sun for a local bus to take me the two miles or so into the town on Sandstone, Minnesota where I had to make a connection to Duluth and ultimately to the airport for a flight home.

There was no bus station in town, but across the street from the marked stop was a tavern, a simple looking white frame building with a Hamm’s sign over the door.  I had an hour or so to kill until my coach was scheduled to arrive.  What the hell. 

Despite the relatively early hour, the joint was open.  Once inside, after my eyes adjusted, it was one of those places with knotty pine  paneling, short bar with battered chrome and red leather stools, a big old back bar with a grimy mirror covered with faded snap shots and pithy adages on placards.  The décor was deer heads, stuffed muskies, girly calendars from seed stores and auto parts places, and an array of Hamm’s signs replete with sky blue waters and dancing bears.  Three or four older men in overalls and seed company caps perched on stools.  They looked up as I banged through the screen door and returned to a close examination of their beers.

They had to know where I came from.  Who else would wander in decked out in the polyester and Rayon of a five dollar pimp and carrying a canvas bag but a con fresh from the joint down the road?  They had seen it before.  None of their business.  I ordered a glass of beer on tap and a shot of Christian Brothers from the bored middle aged lady behind the bar.  When in Rome, drink like a Roman.  Aaaah. Mighty tasty.  Exactly like freedom.  I had another round before it was time for the coach. 

I left knowing that my silent companions would have something to talk about for the rest of the morning.

The Duluth airport was as you would suspect, small, uncrowded, and relaxed.  I picked up the ticket arranged for by my Fellow Workers in Chicago.  I don’t recall how long I had to wait for the flight.  Not too long, probably.  After a while the few passengers for Chicago were called out to the tarmac.  If memory serves me right, the plane that taxied up to the gate was a Frontier Airlines two prop Convair 240, just like the ones who used to land behind my house at the airport in Cheyenne.

This was only my second ever commercial flight—the first since flying to California with my family when I was six.  The seats were commodious and there was plenty of leg room.  The young stewardesses—they were still called that then—were friendly an attentive.  One asked me “why are you flying today?”  To my surprise, I found myself telling her.  She seemed sympathetic.   Even on a prop plane, it was a short flight to O’Hare.  And they even served a meal and I bought a beer.  That’s how long ago this was.

My girlfriend Cecelia was waiting at the gate.  She had to take time off of work to come pick me up, no small sacrifice when you are eking by pay check to pay check. I hadn’t really expected her.  But I was glad to see her.  It was not exactly one of those airport/train station scenes where long separated lovers rush into each other’s arms for a passionate embrace, but it was nice.

Even then O’Hare was a huge, bustling, sprawling place.  A good hike from the gate, then down the escalators.  With just my little brown canvas bag, I had no need to wait for my baggage, but by the time we reached the doors on the lower concourse the blisters on both feet from those plastic shoes were torn open and I was in agony with every step.

We stepped out into the full blast furnace of a Chicago summer on steroids, intensified by the acres and acres of parking lots and asphalt.  It was a good hike to Cecelia’s black VW Bug.  I collapsed my frame onto the scorching seats and cranked down the window.  The inside was roughly the same temperature as a ceramic kiln.  Cecelia switched on the radio.  The first song that popped up after a Magikist commercial was Delta Dawn by Helen Redding—the woman I had poured my heart out to in an inappropriate fan letter while I was still at Cook County.  That already seemed like ancient history to me.

Just before we exited the parking lot, I asked Cecelia to stop by a wire trash bin.  I struggled to get those shoes of—blood was soaking my socks and even the socks were worn through in places. I handed them to Cecelia to toss out her window into the basket.

Finally we were home, the first floor of a spacious two flat on Fremont Street just south of Addison near Wrigley Field.  I had taken off the blue polyester leisure suit jacket.  Sweat drenched the completely unabsorbent clingy Rayon shirt.  The place was stifling despite the best effort of a single over-worked box fan in a window.  I collapsed into my thrift-store easy chair.  Cecelia ran out to pick up pizza from a favorite local joint, tiny Mama Leone’s on Sheffield.  We ate in the living room, pizza box open on the coffee table and drank Dago red Pisano in tumblers from a gallon jug.  There were spurts of conversation and long silences.  Cecelia smoked intensely.

Finally it was time for bed.  In those days, especially in the August heat, I slept in the nude.  At Cook Count and Sandstone I had become slept fully clothed, just in case.  It was wonderful to feel the momentarily cool sheets against my wretched hide.  Despite the heat, Cecelia came to bed in a long cotton nightgown. 

When she shut the lights out I proceeded to make the move that young men long separated from young women are wont to make,  I threw my arm over Cecelia’s shoulders and caressed her breast.  I was leaning in to kiss her when she set bolt upright.  “I just can’t do it now.  It’s too soon.”  Oh.

I gathered up my pillows and moved to the green sofa in the front room.  Cecelia and I never slept together again.

I had little time to process this personal development.  The IWW General Convention was convening on Labor Day Weekend.  Friday, August 31, delegates from around the U.S. and Canada were drifting into town.  We had given up our large second floor hall in a converted bowling alley across from the Biograph Theater and moved to a storefront on Webster Avenue near Halstead earlier in the year, so the union had rented the Shoeworker’s Hall on Milwaukee Avenue for the convention.  I knew the business agent, an old former Communist from when we had worked together on a May Day Rally at the Haymarket the year before.

  As was customary there was a social Friday evening while delegates checked in and got housing assignments on the floors and couches of local Fellow Workers.  As usual beer flowed freely and there was plenty of singing.  And better singing than usual.  Utah Phillips and some of the other touring musicians were in attendance.  I circulated around the hall greeting old friends.  I got hugs and high fives.  But if I expected to be hailed as a returning hero, I was disappointed.  No one wanted to make a fuss.  There was other business afoot.

The convention that year was one of the largest in years and several important—and some controversial—items were on the agenda when the gavel went down on Saturday morning.  The hall, like everything else in Chicago, was blistering hot, the slowly rotating overhead fans barely able to stir the heavy air. 

The major item on the agenda was a new Industrial Organizing Committee (IOC) to revamp the unions approach to job organizing.  I had been heavily involved in the planning stages before I went to the joint.  The committee had already produced manuals for organizers and collective bargaining.  Now we sought certain by-law changes on how organizers were credentials and who to report to when most of  our Industrial Unions currently existed only on organizational charts.  We were preparing to launch a major organizing drive for Metal and Machinery Workers I.U. 440 in the hundreds of small and medium sized unorganized factories and job shops that dotted Chicago.  Some of the more ideological anarchist members were upset that our avowed purpose was to bring shops under IWW union contracts and because our organizing manual included instructions on the use of National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) election processes to gain certification.  It was an old ideological divide between those who wanted to refuse to collaborate with the state and wanted to on rely informal, militant shop floor control and allegedly practical unionists seeking formal job protections for the members.  The debate was lively, and sometimes emotional.  In the end proponents of the IOC carried the day. 

I surprised myself by not taking a leading role in the debate, though I stood up and yodeled a time or two.  I was still a little distracted.  I spent most of the time taking notes for the Industrial Worker coverage of the convention I was supposed to write.  During breaks and meals, I booked down the street to a shot-and-beer liquor store saloon and partook in both options.

The weekend after the convention several of my Chicago Branch fellow workers arranged a welcome home outing for me at the Illinois Railway Museum in what seemed at the time to be off-the-edge-of-the-world village of Union in McHenry County.  That just a few miles from where I live now, more than 40 years later, in Crystal Lake.

It had cooled off, finally.  I came out in my old uniform of cowboy boots, jeans, plaid shirt with a red bandana at the throat, denim jacket with an IWW Globe and Stars patch sown on the back like motor cycle club colors, and my very battered old once white Stetson.  After a day of gawking at the rolling stock—including a steam switch engine I had watched work in the Union Pacific yards in Cheyenne, a stainless-steel Burlington Zephier that I had once ridden on, and a CTA Ravenswood line train just like ones I had ridden countless times—we all climbed on a big steam engine and someone took a black and white photo to commemorate the occasion.  It was the second and last photo of me without a goatee.  I started letting it grow back in the next day.

Back home, things were understandably uncomfortable, but entirely civil, between me and Cecelia.  I started spending evenings visiting my friend and Fellow Worker Kathleen Taylor who had an apartment just down the block on Cornelia.  Kathy was a small lively young woman with a mass of semi-unruly dark brown hair, and large, expressive brown eyes. She was by day a mud hop—railroad yard clerk—one of the first women to have that job since World War II.  She was the one who had organized the expedition to Union.  She was a very active Wobbly.  At the time she was Chicago Branch Secretary.  And she was a musician and singer, playing the banjo and a beautiful small mahogany Martin guitar.

We were comfortable and easy with one another in ways that Cecelia and I never really were.  One thing led to another.  You know.  After Kathy’s apartment was burglarized we decided to move in together.

Cecelia was not displeased.  Relieved would be the correct motion.  To her credit she had loyally stood by me through my entire ordeal from the first draft induction notice to my release.  About half way through that mission she discovered that whatever we had together was gone.  But I got no Dear John letter to make my time harder.  After we split she withdrew from our IWW circle—we had met when she was a Three Penny Cinema striker and I was Branch Secretary.  We lost contact.  I heard she went back to school down state.  Many years later I learned that she had a fine career, married, had children and grandchildren.  Mazel tov!

Kathy and  I found a fourth floor walk-up two bedroom apartment in a large courtyard building on Webster Avenue, across the street from Oscar Meyer School Park, around the corner from Carlos and Marianne Cortez and just a few blocks west of the IWW office.  The building soon filled with several other Fellow Workers, despite the herds of roving cockroaches and became celebrated in local lore as Wobbly Towers.

In those days you could get a job in Chicago ridiculously easily.  The by word was “If you can’t find work in Chicago, you can’t find work anywhere.”  I got a job right away pulling drill presses at Ditzgen Corporation which manufactured engineering, surveying, and drafting in two large buildings on the either side of Sheffield Avenue at Fullerton, an easy walk from the new place. 

Ditzgen had been founded in the 19th Century by Eugene Ditzgen, a leading German Socialist and the man who financed Charles H. Kerr & Company’s first ever English translation of Marx’s Das Kapital.  It had recently left family hands and had been acquired as a subsidiary of a much larger company.  The factory was one of the targets of our IU 440 organizing drive.  I never brought the plant into the IWW but I did become a leader in a moribund old in house union, became Secretary, and negotiated a whole brand new contract with big raises, job definitions, and benefits for the workers there.

In 1974 Kathy was elected IWW General Secretary Treasurer.  She and fiends formed a Wobbly band named the DeHorn Crew.  I continued to work on the Industrial Worker becoming editor.  We shared close friendships in Wobbly circles.  We enjoyed out lives. The next four years were some of the happiest of my life.

And the goatee?  It came back in once again a bright orange.  It never left my chin again.  Today it is gray.